Five reasons that 'porn for kids' is a terrible idea

Vonny LeClerc: Five reasons that 'porn for kids' is a terrible idea

COMMENT

OCCASIONALLY, I’ll read a sentence so out there, I have to read it over a few more times to make sure I’m not missing something. This week, it was the concept of “porn for kids”. This is undoubtedly a sign that one has cultivated such an open mind that one’s brain has fallen out.

I’m not going to name the young woman who suggested this. She’s a porn performer and has spent the last several days fielding every meme and gif that exists to shout someone down on the internet.

Given how many responses came from those in the same line of work, I think she got a measure of the general attitude to the idea. But, I do think it’s worthy of more discussion. If people think this is the solution to the problem, we need to take another look at the problem.

Not that long ago I would have made a case for feminist pornography. I’ve even made the case in these pages for talking to your children about it. Years after seeing the fruits of heady liberalism, I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter how much feminist ethics imbues your work, it’s still going to sit within a problematic context. This is what makes it particularly difficult for young people to navigate.

It’s one thing for a consenting adult to make an informed choice to view such material, but it’s an entirely different ask of an adolescent driven by hormones and with less life experience to act as checks and balances.

Adolescents will want to look at sexual imagery, and they have been doing it since far longer than the internet has been around. When I was a kid, it was smutty playing cards found in a bush or someone’s Dad’s dirty magazine. Now almost everyone has an internet connection they can hold in the palm of their hand. Porn is free, easy to find, and easy to hide from parents.

The problem is that the majority of the sexual imagery available to them is deeply misogynistic and a far cry from the type of sex most people have. Intimacy is scant, relationships are non-existent, aggression is rampant, immediate gratification is everything and extreme subtypes (incest, animals, rape, SFM) have made their way on to the front pages of the most mainstream sites. There’s little about it that could pass for being healthy and education for a minor’s burgeoning sexuality.

Taking the suggestion in the best possible faith – which is extremely difficult – I find my only response is a long list of nos. We do not need to be making porn for kids. Here are 5 (of the many) reasons why it’s a horrible idea:

1. Adolescence is complicated enough

Going through puberty is intense. Changing bodies, surging hormones, new urges and a change in the way the opposite sex relates to you makes for a fraught few years. The massive changes adolescents experience puts them under tremendous pressure. This is also the period where their sexuality is shaped by biological, psychological and social factors. It’s a hot mess for young people as is: adding ‘educational’ pornography into the mix isn’t going to make that easier on them. And why would they watch something tame when they could find hardcore in seconds?

2. Porn is an industry. Its heart is capitalism, not education

Porn is not an educational resource. Its purpose is to make money by preying on the human hunger for sexual imagery. A third of men between 18 and 30 believe they are addicted to porn, an industry which is purported to generate as much as 13 billion annually in the US alone. The math is clear: desire has been commodified and monetised, at which point being ethical doesn’t matter a great deal. Where exactly does softcore-porn-for-kids fit into this picture?

3. Young people need to understand their sexuality outside of porn

Porn has shaped the way people have sex. Most young sexually active women will have a story about the things her partner has asked her to do sexually. The narrow beauty standards have also created anxiety among young woman about their bodies and their body hair. Positions have changed based on camera angles and not mutual pleasure. Young people need to understand their bodies on their own terms, and to be able to understand sexual desire without the heightened stimuli pornography provides. It can all too easily become a crutch.

4. The ethics of adults producing content for minors to watch

Producing explicit content for minors strays into some murky territory, ripe for opportunistic predators. Plenty would use an adolescent’s sexual savvy as a sign that they were ready for sex, and potentially making sexual offences harder to prosecute. This could so easily be co-opted and used as a means of grooming children by those with ulterior motives. No adult should be knowingly producing sexual content for the gratification of minors. In any other context, this would earn you a spot on the sex offender’s register.

5. ‘Kids are gonna do it anyway’ is a terrible argument.

The argument that we might as well because we can’t stop them is deeply flawed. Parents will not be able to entirely prevent their children from seeing inappropriate sexual imagery, but substituting one form for another ‘tamer’ version doesn’t fix the issue. We can’t block everything all of the time, and we have little control over what comes to them via their peers. What we can do is intervene and mediate. We need to talk to kids about sex and about their bodies – but we also have to talk to them about the sorts of unrealistic and problematic things they might see online.

Don’t get me wrong – there are some great resources out there for young people who are curious about sex. For kids whose parents won’t discuss it with them, or who are struggling with their sexuality, there are excellent, reputable sources of information out there. Topping those resources up with ‘boobies and kissing’ for kids is not the answer to helping them develop sexually.

As ridiculous as the original premise is, there is a takeaway to be mined from it: better sex education is vital. More than ever in this complicated, pornified world, kids need to figure out what healthy sex is. I don’t believe that the answer lies in a different kind of porn.

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